


Every Cell Remembers

by Beauteousmajesty



Series: On discovery [8]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Have not seen source content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:31:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22593139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beauteousmajesty/pseuds/Beauteousmajesty
Summary: Norway is as much landscape as he is human. Sometimes it's good to remember that.
Relationships: Denmark/Norway (Hetalia)
Series: On discovery [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/913554
Kudos: 28





	Every Cell Remembers

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, this one comes with some complicated ideology. I've drawn a little on people like Foucault, Morton, Derrida, and more to write this one. There's also some Renaissance stuff that is just in there. I can do explaining if required.
> 
> The title is from The Seed by Aurora, not just bc it slaps but bc it has similar vibes to what I was going for here.

A river, swollen with spring snow melt, rushed past a damp and muddy patch of riverbank. The bank was sheltered from the weak spring sun by a collection of scruffy looking pine trees. It was not a location that many would choose to pass the time. It was, however, where Norway had been lying for a sizeable moment in time.

If he concentrated, the boundary between his feet and the ground made itself obvious to him. Without that concentration, he was uncontained by the mortal vessel of his body. He was as much linked to his hands as the early spring mud between his toes.

Alone, he was the landscape, unnamed, unbounded, undefinable. He simply was. He was the trees and the seeds germinating beneath the soil. He felt the rush of the river beside him. It carried him away, or was he moving? He was both water and riverbank. 

As the water, he felt himself rush around the humanoid hand resting in the water, obstructing the flow. As the bank he could follow the arm attached to hand into the body of the nation lying face down, watching and feeling the water.

Norway rolled onto his back to watch the birds he could feel leaving the pine trees and disappearing into the sky. This place, this part of him must have been named by humans, but he had no need of a name. He was simply here. He was always here.

He couldn't narrate the history of the place without thought, he was connected to its present. He could feel the aches of the trees and the steady decomposition in the mud. He couldn't tell what the rotting body had belonged to, it was just mulch now. This was the way things worked.

He felt his way deep in the soil, encountering life and death in perfect harmony. The two fed into each other, their balance familiar to him. It was comforting to feel life and death in balance. When the balance shifted, it was a cause for worry. The thirteen hundreds had been uncomfortable, with death weighing heavy on the scale. He had ridden through those years with the sense of a sudden drop that failed to end.

He finds his way into a seed just germinating beneath the soil, he feels it push upward in the search for life. It is one of many, the ground below him teems with life. Once his consciousness has left here, the plants where his body lays will emerge early. He will be unaware of it.

When he walks through the forests of himself, he doesn't notice how the trees reach out to touch him and the seeds grow to meet him. The landscape responds to its consciousness.

Borders are a human concept. Norway is not human, but he feels the way their ideas imprint themselves onto his consciousness. He and Sweden overlap in parts like a Venn diagram, both existing within the soil. He is contained and defined only by human labelling. He exists as he is named. Perhaps he was something else before.

He came to the forest to consider himself. He is so many different things. Someone, he cannot remember who, had built on the Renaissance duality of monarchs to define their bodies. Denmark had told him once. He'd been familiar with the body natural and the body politic. He'd seen his kings decay as their natural bodies failed but they'd ruled on with the ever present body politic of the king of Norway.

Existence as a nation was multifaceted. Norway was as much the earth and mud and landscape as he was the people and the concept of a collective identity for them. He was a political system of many conflicting parts as well as being his own person. To summarise a nation into one body or even the two allotted to the king wouldn't work, Denmark had argued.

Norway's body natural was his landscape; the mountains and rivers and plants that fed into the balance of life and death. His body politic was the persona of Kongeriket Norge, the face his rulers expected him to wear. His body national was the representation of his people. It was what was affected by the coming of plague. The fourth and final body of a nation, was the body mortal, the personality behind the mask.

Norway's bodies did not mesh neatly. His physical body bore scars from all of them. His body natural coughed up blood and oil from the oil production that made his body politic's economy comfortable. His existence was one of conflict.

He could sink into the body natural most comfortably, becoming concerned only with the mud and germination of seeds. Any concerns from his other bodies could be ignored as he let the river wash over him, comfortable and comforted by nature's cycles.

The birds had vanished from the sky above him, leaving only branches swaying from their departure. He caught himself in the pine needles of one of the trees, enjoying the weak sunlight in the way that trees do.

He sank back into his physical body with the ringing of his phone. He heard it from the tree as a sound not dissimilar to the cries of the departed birds. He answered it. Laying on his back about fifty miles out from Bergen, he let his bodies reunite to retake his role. He was wanted in Oslo. He was always wanted in Oslo.

He wondered if they wanted him with mud coating his bare feet and twigs in his hair. He was not dressed as his government would expect of him. He would have to readdress the appearance of his body. He rolled himself off of the ground and sought out the city, letting his physical form slide between spatial realities, hopping his way across distances. 

When he ceased to be earth and air and space, he found himself in his small city garden. Denmark was waiting. It must be Friday. Norway let the feel of the city wash over him, reconnecting with his people's many hopes and dreams as his bodies fit themselves back into balance with each other.

It was Friday, and he was home. His body mortal took the reins. He didn't care about the political implications of loving Denmark. He didn't care to greet him formally. He just opened his arms for a hug and let himself be as human as he could manage.

In Denmark's arms he could separate his body from the mud between his toes. He could feel the cold dampness of it as a contrast to the warmth of Denmark's arms.

'Are you aware of the entire bird's nest of sticks in your hair, Nor?' Denmark's voice was quiet and only somewhat teasing. 'Also, did you fall in a marsh again? You smell slightly like you're trying to decompose.'

Norway wasn't particularly in a talking mood, so he rubbed a streak of mud down Denmark's cheek as a response. He untangled himself from Denmark's arms, leaving only their hands connected, before heading into the house. A shower was very much in order.

His clock was striking four as he climbed the stairs. Iceland would be here in an hour. It was time to return to life. He hadn't seen his little brother for what seemed an impossibly long amount of time. Norway was glad at the prospect of having both Denmark and Iceland together at once. 

He'd just finished some repairs to Iceland's viola. Perhaps they could play this weekend to check that he'd fixed it right. He threw his clothes in the machine as he climbed in the shower. Denmark joined him. Norway didn't mind. There was room enough for two, and besides, Denmark had somehow managed to get mud on his face.


End file.
